


Put The Color Inside My World

by leobrat



Category: Taylor Swift (Musician)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-03-10
Updated: 2011-03-10
Packaged: 2017-10-16 20:47:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,431
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/169171
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/leobrat/pseuds/leobrat
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Well, it's been the most important year of his life.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Put The Color Inside My World

**Author's Note:**

> Obviously, WAY outside the realm of reality. This was written before any John/Taylor rumors were confirmed.

She’s _just_ fallen asleep. Taylor thinks it over for a minute- should she not turn on the tv and therefore, _not_ risk waking her daughter up? Guaranteed, his spot on Kimmel will be on youtube by early morning, but...she _really_ wanted to see this. Shiri stirs a little in her sleep, and Taylor leans over her, searching for any sign of discomfort, but the baby gives a lazy yawn, and settles back in, giving Taylor reason four thousand five hundred twenty-eight to love her with all her heart.

Making sure that the volume is turned to barely audible, Taylor turns on the tv to ABC, just as Jimmy Kimmel is introducing his first guest of the evening.

***

“Our first guest is a ten-time Grammy award winner, and...I hear he just had a baby?” Jimmy pauses for effect, shaking his head as if he’s sure that this information can’t be true, and the crowd laughs appreciatively. US Weekly has a new feature- _Shiri Sightings_ \- and if John and Taylor were magnets for the paparazzi before they were parents, they’re the freaking island from _Lost_ now. “Please welcome John Mayer, everyone!”

The music starts up, but it can hardly be heard over the crowd’s cheers. John hasn’t done a tv interview since early on in Taylor’s pregnancy, almost a year ago, and...well, it’s been the most important year of his life. There’s a shitload to say. He better not fuck it up.

Jimmy offers him a warm handshake, and grins an enthusiastic, “Congratulations, man. She’s beautiful.” He says this under his breath, holding the mic away from his collar, and John nods in appreciation. He can’t argue with that.

The music has faded but the applause takes a good while to die down, even though Jimmy’s handlers are doing their best, working through the crowd and telling people to sit and be quiet. The show has been a well-oiled machine for years, and he knows they’re pressed for time. John folds his long body into the chair closest to Jimmy’s desk, as Jimmy settles back down. “John Mayer, everyone,” Jimmy repeats, as he gets down to business, a minute or two of ‘witty’ repartee, pretty much what he’d been expecting. If he’d learned to change a diaper yet (and he had, and could do it in under twenty seconds), whether he was getting less sleep now with a newborn, or years ago, ‘partying like a rockstar’ (no question- Shiri could definitely outlast any drummer or guitarist he’d ever played with).

“So her name means...”

“‘My Song’, in Hebrew,” John answers. “Taylor picked it out, and well, once we saw her, it just fit.”

“So, how old is she now?”

“Three-and-a-half months. She’ll actually be four months old the same day the record comes out,” John smiles. He hadn’t planned it that way, but he’s glad all the same.

“And I see you haven’t forgotten how to promote yourself,” Jimmy replies sarcastically, and he pulls the cd from his desk- it’s what he’s really here to talk about, though he doesn’t mind answering questions about his daughter. He knows people are curious, and as long as they’re respectful, it’s okay (sort of). “So, here it is, people, John Mayer’s sixth studio album, _Man In The Moon_.” The audience cheers in anticipation, and John graciously smiles. “Would you say that this is the most personal album you’ve ever done.”

John evades the question. He’s had a lot of practice. “I mean...every album I’ve ever done has been really personal to the time I was writing it, I try to be honest with every emotion, and this...is just my life as it is now.” _Perfect._ He thinks to himself. His life is perfect- not amazing, not blessed, but perfect.

“Yes, but I seem to remember you saying things in the past like...you would never want anyone to know who the songs you write are about, and you can’t see yourself ever putting a song about a child on an album, something about who wants to hear ‘Goodnight Jojo’...” Jimmy needles him a little, and John expected nothing less.

He chuckles. Oh, the things he’s said in his past that he wished he could take back. He knows it’s all about to be thrown back in his face. “Yeah, I mean...yeah,” John laughs, and the audience laughs with him. His last album, he wrote when he was dating Taylor, and even then, with all the multitudes of intense emotion that year had brought, he still was trying (forcing himself really) to write about relationships in the abstract. This album was an ode to his family.

There was the lullaby, ‘Moon Child’ which was almost a play-by-play of watching Shiri fall asleep. It was an activity he found endlessly fascinating, but John originally had never intended to record it. Taylor insisted, and the way she looked at him when he was softly crooning it over Shiri’s crib made him feel prouder than he ever had in his entire professional life. And then there was ‘Taylor’, the nine-minute instrumental solo he’d recorded the day Taylor told him she was pregnant. After celebrating that night, and after she’d fallen asleep, he’d gone down to the studio in their home. She eventually wandered down after him, and sat in the booth with him while he serenaded her without words, playing, losing himself in the music and the joy of that moment, looking her in the eye, occasionally kissing her, but never ceasing playing. He played his love for her, his desire, and when he finally laid his guitar aside, they both were breathing hard, and it was the best form of foreplay he’d ever thought of.

“So this album...basically it’s about the world I wish my daughter could have,” John begins to explain his concept, but several women are _awwww_ -ing quite loudly in the audience. He grins in mock embarrassment. “I mean, one day, she’ll grow up and hopefully she’ll be well-prepared for the world, and will have the best parts of her mother and me, but for now...life is pretty good for our little Shiri, and this album is just taking this moment, so that we never forget exactly what this year is like.”

Jimmy smiles, and John feels like for once he’s not going to have a smart thing to say. He clears his throat. “So, what are you playing for us tonight? Something new?”

John shakes his head. “Nope, tonight it’s an oldie- hopefully still a goodie- but everyone gets a copy of _Man In The Moon_.” The crowd cheers. “And I’ve signed them.” The crowd goes wild. “DON’T leak it to the internet.” Jimmy laughs along with everyone else, and John crosses the stage to the band, picking up his own well-worn acoustic.

The crowd goes crazy once again, as he picks out the first familiar chords, and John smiles. He wrote this forever ago, but it’s still a _great_ song, if he says so himself. He skips the second verse. It no longer has any meaning in his life.

***

Taylor carefully wakes up as she hears someone moving around the room. She’s become so in tune with an infant sleeping tucked against her, and Shiri doesn’t even stir. “John? Is that you?”

“It better be me,” her husband’s voice is low and scratchy. Taylor checks the clock on her bedside table. It’s almost 4:30 in the morning. “How many men are visiting your bedroom?”

“I thought you weren’t coming back until tomorrow-”

“Turns out I can’t stay away for one whole night,” John slides into bed, kissing first his wife and then his baby. Taylor sighs against him, running her fingers through his hair, wet from the shower.

“I saw the show.”

“How’d I do?”

Taylor laughs. “Not half bad.”

“Tell me how you really feel,” John chuckles, smoothing his big hand over the top of Shiri’s soft head. She has a little crown of downy blond curls coming through.

“I haven’t heard you play that one in a while,” Taylor says sleepily, beginning to close her eyes again.

“Well, I’ve been practicing with this little one here,” John answers. “Shiri told me she likes it, so I played it tonight.”

“Well, in that case, can you sing us back to sleep?”

John smiles and kisses the tip of his adorable wife’s nose. There’s no way any of them will last through this whole song, and he whispers to her, “ _Girls become lovers who turn into mothers, so mothers be good to your daughters too..._ ”


End file.
